Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Vandals destroy 30k-year-old indigenous cave drawings in Australia

smithsonianmag.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 233 posts

Re: Vandals destroy 30k-year-old indigenous cave drawings in Australia

#81

Post by ars »

cm2187 wrote: post #17
AnotherGoodName wrote: post #12

I have a friend on a property with cave art here in the hunter valley of Australia. We really don't do enough to preserve it at all. He's responsible and ensures no harm but it's still weird to own private land with 10k+ year old art and have no one really give a damn about it. Compare it to European attitudes, eg. Lascaux where they closed off the cave completely and only allow tourists near the modern reconstructio…

I presume the first thing to do is to record a high res 3d scan and photos of the cave, as vandals aren't the only threat (natural elements).

At least for the cave in the article it's thousands of square meters of art. The art looks like parallel lines made by dragging fingers over the surface.

I guess you could take some pictures, but it's not the kind of art that really needs high res 3d scans. In this case it's more the concept of "there was a human that did something here a very long time ago", rather than how the art itself looks.

The vandalism only covered a small portion of it, but I suspect the vandals didn't even realize they were overwriting anything, since it's really not very obvious as art - it just looks like lines.

Re: Vandals destroy 30k-year-old indigenous cave drawings in Australia

#83

Post by yesenadam »

aflag wrote: post #61
fleshdaddy wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think so. The climate change stunts didn’t actually destroy anything as they only glued themselves/threw soup on the glass coverings. If they were really looking at it they’d see the different between that and this sort of irreversible damage.

At least some of the protesters did destroy some paintings. Eg.: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/climate-protesters-campai...

The article you linked to doesn't support your claim. It mentions 3 recent attacks, and all the paintings (Leonardo, Van Gogh, Vermeer) were apparently protected by glass and not damaged.

Re: Vandals destroy 30k-year-old indigenous cave drawings in Australia

#84

Post by akerl_ »

josephcsible wrote: post #20

My suspicion is that whoever did this was emboldened when none of the climate change vandals who did similar things to paintings in museums got any real punishment. If they all got a year or two in prison instead, I don't think this would have happened.

What are you basing that suspicion on?

Re: Vandals destroy 30k-year-old indigenous cave drawings in Australia

#85

Post by zebracanevra »

denkmoon wrote: post #70
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Compare it to European attitudes Yeah... Can we swap? Or like find a middle ground? Here in slovenia, we have socialist buildings from 1970s that someone decided to culturally protect, and the owners cannot renew the leaking facade and add insulation, because the outside has to stay the same, and puting insulation on the inside would reduce the inside space and make walkways and doors too narrow to pass (or carry a…

We have the same issues with heritage buildings in Australia too, there's no silver bullet.

And a lot of those buildings just happen to accidentally burn down, such as the White Bay Hotel in Sydney.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Bay_Hotel

Re: Vandals destroy 30k-year-old indigenous cave drawings in Australia

#86

Post by ars »

cyclotron3k wrote: post #32
oluwie wrote: post #8

I know this is going to be an unpopular opinion but I don't really think this is THAT big of a deal. Yea, I know the art is old and all that and it really is unfortunate but its also the nature for all things to change. Maybe in another 30k years, we'll be looking at the defacement as an amazing piece of art that tells the story of the current social climate at this point in time, or something along those lines.

They could have put their vandalism on another wall that didn't have one of the rarest pieces of human expression. But no, they purposely went out of their way to destroy something extremely rare and utterly irreplaceable. Yes, all things change, and eventually everything will be lost in the eventual heat death of the universe, and all human endeavour will be rendered pointless. But it's still a totally pointless and…

> But no, they purposely went out of their way to destroy something extremely rare and utterly irreplaceable.

It's actually not so clear it was purposeful. If you didn't know there was art there, you would not be able to tell. It's very possible they just wanted to write some nonsense, and didn't realize they were overwriting anything significant.

The art looks like parallel lines made by dragging a hand over the surface, and it covers virtually every bit of the surface. The vandalism is only in a small part.

A more useful reaction is to teach people more history, so they would know about their heritage in the cave.

Re: Vandals destroy 30k-year-old indigenous cave drawings in Australia

#87

Post by serf »

jpgvm wrote: post #47

Pretty unfortunate and disrespectful. Sort of emblematic of Australian bogan culture however. For some reason Australian teenagers are among the worst in this regard. As someone that grew up in country Australia this really doesn't surprise me at all. Contributing factor is that racism against indigenous Australians is somewhat fueled by the same sort of rhetoric that became popular in the Trump election campaign. No…

>Contributing factor is that racism against indigenous Australians is somewhat fueled by the same sort of rhetoric that became popular in the Trump election campaign.

indigenous Australians have been the victims of racism and racist action for centuries. Trump's effect on them -- if there is any at all -- is a small blip in their history.

Your attempt to shoe-horn your personal issues into this feels apparent to me.

Re: Vandals destroy 30k-year-old indigenous cave drawings in Australia

#88

Post by freedomben »

remote_phone wrote: post #23

Let’s hope these fuckers are stupid enough to post on social media. The punishment should be 10 years, not 6 months.

10 years of a person's life for a (really stupid) childish mistake? And of course when they get out of prison there will be serious career impact that will last their entire lives. What they did is horrifying, but barbarism can't be the right answer.

Re: Vandals destroy 30k-year-old indigenous cave drawings in Australia

#89

Post by BuyMyBitcoins »

neodymiumphish wrote: post #35
astine wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Artwork such as this is not just important from an artistic perspective, it's important from an archeological, historical, and paleontological perspective. There is a lot we have learned from ancient rock art and probably a lot that we have yet to learn. For example, by exampining the kinds of animals in ancient cave paintings paleontologists have been able to learn certain details about the appearance and behavior o…

Considering the security established around it and the knowledge of what it was, I find it hard to believe that enough photos, samples, etc, weren't taken before this vandalism to have gained or have the capacity to gain any knowledge these drawings may provide.

This is going to sound cynical or possibly even dismissive, but not all cave art is alike and it is possible that the cave in question wasn’t prioritized for study or preservation because it was common or relatively unremarkable from an archaeological perspective.

I’m not saying it was unworthy or worthless, but given the limited amount of resources and grant money to go around, this cave may simply have been neglected in favor of the others.

Re: Vandals destroy 30k-year-old indigenous cave drawings in Australia

#90

Post by belfalas »

spritefs wrote: post #64

Question for Australians here: is racism against aboriginals widespread in Australia? How does the govt work to prevent it?

I am not an Australian but I've been to Australia and have Australian friends and colleagues. "Racism" is not quite the right word for what's been done to the aboriginals, it's more like the genocide committed against indigenous people in the Americas. Aboriginals are "Black" but that's beside the point - the British did a very thorough job trying to wipe them off the face of the planet. Think Trail of Tears level horror if you're familiar with US history.

If you want to read about things that are even more truly horrific, read up on the history of Tasmania. It was even worse there.

Post reply on HN